Congregation B'nai Jeshurun

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High Street, now known as MLK Boulevard, was once an epicenter of jewish culture in the city. The corner of the Boulevard and Muhammed Ali Avenue holds one of the finest religious structures ever constructed within the boundaries of Newark. However, the story goes back even further than the landmark structure might lead you to assume. 

The B'nai Jeshurun congregation established Newarks first synagague in 1858. The building that we see today wasn't built until almost 60 years later though. The architect chosen in 1915 for the new temple was Albert S. Gotleib. The building rose up from the ground made of mighty brick and limestone. The inside of the temple was adorned with marble and Gustavino acoustical tile. 

The congregation left the city in favor of South Orange, and then moved again to Short Hills in 1968. The Hopewell Baptist church moved into the building, and continued to use it until 2017. We visited this incredible building before it got popular amongst the instagram tourist crowd. As a result, we had no idea what to expect as we descended the stairs towards the sanctuary. As we got close we heard someone sweeping up the corridor between us and the doorway we needed to walk through. I peeked around the corner and saw who it was; a lone man who didnt seem too much older than me. I called over to him and told him we didn't mean to bother him and that we just wanted a few photos of the building. After a brief moment of panic he welcomed us through, telling us he was just cleaning up the room he was going to be staying in. He also seemed mildly concerned, and told us that there are several other folks inside who might not be as cool with us. We took our photos quickly and went to head out but struck up another conversation with him on the way. Turns out he was just trying to find a good deserted place he and all his friends to live in while they worked out their demons. The most suprising thing of all was that he started talking about some YouTube videos of local abandoned places that he used to watch. Videos that I made 10 years ago. It was one of the most bizzare moments I've ever experienced.

Eventually the squatters were evicted and work started to bring the building back to life. For whatever reason the new owners stripped out all the pews and the original woodwork to replace them with cheap poplar. Thankfully that seems to be the only major change made to the main structure. The building hasn't reopened yet, but New Jersey Jewish News released an [article](https://njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com/renovating-bnai-jeshurun/) that shows the new furnishings. I'm so grateful to be able to end this story on a happy note since the building was definitely facing an uncertain future. Thankfully now the building will go on to serve the city for decades more.

Amboy Cinemas

There are a handful of abandoned buildings in New Jersey history that could be considered "iconic". Your mind might jump to the old Pabst brewery with its rusty, bottle shaped water tower. Maybe your first thought is the Hydro Proof warehouse off the turnpike prominently featured in the Sopranos introduction. Among these old subjective eyesores would have to be the old Amboy Cinemas building right off the Garden State Parkway.

The land between the Parkway and Rt. 35 was once a very large drive in theater which opened in 1957. One may think they would have cleverly hidden the screen so nobody got distracted but that is not the case. The large screen was directly visible to motorists for quite a long span.

 

Before long the business began to decline, and like many other theaters the drive in apparently began showing adult films. Local legend has it that this would cause massive traffic delays, since there was never a wall obstructed to keep the folks on the highway from watching. This has been substantiated by former emplyees whose comments can be found in the Cinema Treasures article. Allegedly they were ordered to stop screening porn, and the drive in closed in 1979.

 

After a few short months the large screen was demolished a 10 screen theater opened up on the land adjacent to where the old projection house was. Between 1981 and 1985 the theater underwent several additions, eventually hosting 14 different auditoriums. 

The theater went on to show movies for another 20 years. I even attneded the theater myself in 2004 to see the SpongeBob SquarePants movie, although unfortunately I cant really remember much about the experience. 

Unfortunately the building was condemned just a few months later on May 28th, 2005 due to a sinkhole forming under the lobby. Even though the building was closed with no chance of re-use, it wasn't demolished. For more than a 15 years nearly 300,000 motorists passed by the deteriorating structure every single day, watching it rot away from the Driscoll Bridge. It always struck me as a strange juxtaposition; the small inferior theater building next to the widest motor vehicle bridge in the world. 

Despite the mild curiosity I never really took the time to figure out how to access the building. However after years of knocking better theaters off my "want to see" list I eventually formulated a plan to visit. I parked my car on a quiet Perth Amboy street, grabbed my bag, and headed towards the Victory Bridge. For whatever reason when they replaced the Victory Bridge in 2004 they decided to include a sidewalk on the side that leads exclusively to the movie theater parking lot. maybe they thought it would help bring business to the ailing theater, though it clearly didn't help. It was super convenient for me though, as I made it to the parking lot just as the sun began to rise. 

 The cinema was suprisingly intact inside. Each auditorium still had its seating, which I did not remember being green when I visited nearly two decades before. I got a kick out of the movies that were displayed on the interior marquis, some of which I don't even remember. After poking around several of the nearly identical auditoriums I set off to find the projection rooms. 

I was excited to find that all of the equipment was lined up in a single room. Despite being gutted of everything but their cases, it was very neat to see so many machines together. 

After about an hour I headed out before traffic got too bad. I'm very glad I visited when I did though. Demolition finally started on the rotting building that had stood for so long in July of 2023. By the end of the month, the lot was clear.

It will be weird driving over the Driscoll Bridge and not seeing Amboy Cinemas anymore. It goes on to join the long list of landmarks from my childhood demolished and built over. 

Roseville Avenue School

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One of Newark's oldest existing public school buildings stands in the Roseville neighborhood, as it has since 1883. 

The three story red brick building served the neighborhood as a kindergarten through fourth grade facility. The building was nearly 15,000 square feet of classroom and hallway space. 

The building didn't see much physical investment over the years. There was never a proper auditorium or gymnasium for the students. 

Not only were there no building additions over the years, the space within the existing walls never saw much improvement either. I was stunned to find what I believe to be the original wooden paneling and window moldings throughout the building.

The last class was held at the Roseville Avenue School in 2015. It sat vacant for a number of years, practically invisible to most who drove past it on a daily basis. It wasn't until 2022 that work began to convert the building into housing. 

Im glad I was able to tour the building before any major work had occurred. I knew there probably wasn't going to be an auditorium which is usually my favorite part of any historic school. I was pleasantly surprised to find the building filled with some really neat hand painted muralwork throughout the first floor. 

I wish I could have spent longer taking pictures, but I was dodging workers who were actively in the early stages of stripping the building out. I had to hide around corners and move from room to room like in the old Scooby-Doo chase scenes. 

The building is set to reopen as housing. I haven't been inside to see how much of the original interior was retained, but the views I catch through the windows tell me it's not much. At least the building itself will go on to serve the city once again, as it has for so long.

Immaculate Conception Convent

At the time the Immaculate Conception Convent was built in Lodi, the town looked quite different. Historic imagery from the 1930's shows vast swaths of undeveloped land surrounding the campus. I can only imagine how dramatic the building would have appeared as it came into view of those traveling along Main Street back in those times. 

The "motherhouse" as it was referred to wasn't actually the first building to be built on the campus. When the sisters first arrived in 1913, they stayed in a small red brick building dubbed the "little red house". This was the only remaining building of a former mill complex that once existed on the property. 

The sisters who resided here used to operate five different catholic schools throughout Bergen County.  The Immaculate Conception School was officially founded in 1915, beginning the long history of education associated with the Felician Sisters. 

The grand motherhouse was built the following year. The massive red brick building consisted of a central chapel with a seperate rear chapel for cloistered nuns. Two four story wings expanded at right angles from the center of the sanctuary and wrapped back around to the rear, creating a very unique layout, almost like an E with a second vertical strike-through. Now that they had the space they needed, the order got to work fulfilling their goals. An orphanage was founded by the sisters in 1918. The sisters then established the Immaculate Conception Normal School just five years later. 

The complex continued to expand as the sister's focus on education grew. Two decades after the normal school opened, the Immaculate Conception Junior College was founded. By 1957 the new Immaculate Conception School opened on the property.

The name was changed again to Felician College in 1967. The school also expanded to nearby East Rutherford as well, constructing a campus around the lovely Iviswold Castle. 

By 2009 all eight Felician orders around the country merged, leaving the large convent mostly empty. Part of the building was still being used for classes, and the chapel was still open for prayer every Sunday. As with most churches around the country though, the Immaculate Conception parish was dwindling in numbers. By the time the Covid pandemic hit there were only a handful of regulars coming every Sunday. 

The large, mostly empty motherhouse was becoming a burden for the university. The administration announced in 2022 that they planned to demolish most of the building as well as the original "little red house" in order to free up space on the campus. I was distraught by the news, as the building was one of the most significant religious structures in the state. It was also in remarkably good shape considering its age. 

I was quick to make a visit to the complex. By the time I had, the buildings were already fenced off. I managed to make my way to where the workers were going in and out and slipped inside when nobody was looking. My main goal was to make it to the chapel before they had begun to strip it. I made it just in time. 

The beautiful hardwood reredos had already been taken out, but thankfully the incredible stained glass windows remained. I tiptoed my way around the complex as the construction crew worked around me. When they entered a room, I would slip out right before they noticed me. I spent about 15 minutes dodging the work crew as I did my thing. We never ended up crossing paths, and I left out the same way I came without anyone noticing. 

It wasn't very long before all the windows had been removed. None of the other New Jersey explorers had gotten in yet, meaning I was the only one who was able to document the chapel with the windows in place. Eventually the pews were taken too, leaving the huge chapel feeling cold and lifeless. I drove by several times as the months passed, each time relieved to see the building was still there. This changed in June of 2023.

I was driving down Main street as the campus came into view. I let out a gasp when I got to the motherhouse and saw the giant pile of twisted wood and broken bricks that was once the chapel. I couldn't believe they managed to take the structure down without it even making the local news. I used to love driving up Henry street, seeing the large looming covent coming into view. This time it was crushing to not see it cresting over the large trees out front.

The Immaculate motherhouse was the third historic New Jersey convent demolished over a nine month period. The Sisters of St John campus in Far Hills was demolished in September 2022, and the St. Francis buildings in Denville were leveled between November and December. It's strange passing the campus now and seeing it so sparse. To add insult to injury, the Immaculate Conception School also announced plans to close permanently at the end of the 2023 school year. It probably won't be too long until the name Immaculate Conception won't even ring a bell to the citizens of the town. I hope this post will serve as a reminder to those who care about the grand building that once stood over them, and that somebody cares enough to read about it. 

B.L. England Generating Station

Every summer my family would join thousands of others on the long trek from the suburbs of North Jersey to Wildwood. The journey always seemed to take forever, but I knew when we hit the Great Egg Harbor Bridge our drive was almost over. It wasn't really the bridge that I remember using as a landmark though; it was the old B. L. England Generating Station on the shores of Beesley's Point that truly served as a welcome sign.

Power generation began at the 350 acre site in 1961, when Atlantic City Energy Co. put four small diesel generators into service. Demand for electricity in the area was growing though, so construction began swiftly on a brand new coal powered unit which was brought online just a year later. The new coal burning unit was far more powerful than the old diesel generators, with a maximum output of 129 megawatts. By 1964 a second coal unit was completed, giving the station a 285MW potential.

Though the England station was among a dozen others in the state burning coal, it did so slightly differently. Most generating stations that came before B.L. England used pulverized coal in their boilers. The England station utilized "Cyclone Boilers", a Babcock & Wilcox invention in which larger chunks of solid fuel are dispersed in a circular fashion. This allowed the fuel to burn up just as efficiently, but with less preperation. It also allowed the England station to burn a small percentage of alternative fuel with coal, in this case scrap tires. One of the downsides of using these larger unrefined chunks of fuel was the amount of waste leftover. As much as 70,000 tons of slag material had to be carted off site every year. It was so cumbersome the plant had to be shut down bi-annually in order to clean out all the waste. 

A decade later the facility was expanded once again. Another 165 megawatt oil burning unit brought the total potential of the plant up to 450mw. Unfortunately with each expansion came new problems. The generating process creates recondensed waste water, which is often scalding hot. The waste water was being discharged into the harbor without being cooled, causing a variety of ecological issues. To help remedy this, a massive concrete cooling tower was added to the site. The near-boiling waste water was pumped into the tower and air cooled before finally ending up in the harbor. 

By 1987 the three original chimneys were chopped down and a new modern one was added. The new stack included scrubber equipment which allowed sulfur dioxide to be removed from the exhaust gas. Since the new chimney was going to stand out so much, the company decided to try and mimic the design of a lighthouse. I've never seen anything quite like it at the dozens of other generating stations I have visited. Unfortuneately the scrubbers weren't doing enough to keep the plant off the radar of the EPA. In 2006 the plant was cited for violating the clean air act. This meant they either needed to install expensive pollution mitigation systems, or close. Atlantic City Energy decided instead to sell the plant to the BL Holdings company for just over 12 million dollars.

By 2013 Unit 1 was brought offline, and BL Holdings planned to convert the other two units to natural gas. They asked the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for permission to build a new pipeline to accomidate the conversion, much to the chagrin of locals. The group initially approved the plan, which would have seen a pipeline going through the Pinelands. However, public utilities are banned from the Pinelands, which is a federally protected national reserve. After some back and forth the pipeline was initially approved by the Pinelands Commision. The locals weren't having it though. The Pinelands Preservation Alliance appealed the ruling, and shortly afterwards the New Jersey Sierra Club and Environment New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the Pinelands Commision. The appellate court ruled against the commission, and found that their president didnt have the authority to approve the pipeline. The Commision voted again a year later, this time in favor with a 9 - 5 split. The NJ Sierra Club and Environment NJ were quick to appeal the ruling. The plant was already scheduled to be shut down for the conversion, but instead it continued to burn coal until 2019. By then the owners of the plant had enough of the legal trouble. Non renewable power generation had become extremely unpopular in New Jersey, and pipelines themselves had become a national hot button issue. On May 1st 2019 the plant officially went offline. 

It was a calm morning as we arrived in the quiet town of Beesley's Point to document the power plant. The warm air was filled with the nostaglic and unmistakable smell of the Jersey Shore. We walked along the old rail spur which once brought coal to the facility, now overgrown and rusted. 

It wasn't long before we were at the base of the massive structure, searching for a staircase. We spent about an hour exploring the building as folks began to wake up. Boats filled the harbor and fisherman were casting reels, it was time for us to leave before someone noticed us and called the police. As we departed it was clear to us there was never going to be another use for this old outdated generating station. Unspurisingly, demolition was announced shortly after our visit. The first major step towards demolition was remediating all the hazardous materials from the plant. In 2022 the first real visible act of demolition took place when the iconic cooling tower was imploded. Over the course of the next year the generating equipment and valuable materials were removed, and on April 21st 2023 the boilers were imploded. It was both impressive and disgusting watching the old steel structure disappear into a cloud of smoke and coal dust. In some ways it was a fitting end for a monument to the most dirty and destructive form of power generation on this planet. 

At the time of publishing, only the iconic chimney and a few ancillary structures remain on the site. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for the property. I still haven't been over the Great Egg Harbor Bridge since the demolition, but I'm sure the next time I do it will be strange not seeing B.L. England for the first time in my life.